To Play the King

He ran his thick tongue around his mouth as if trying absent-mindedly to dislodge a piece of breakfast. ‘You underestimate yourself,’ he muttered. He produced a toothpick, which he used like a sword-swallower to probe into a far corner of his jaw. ‘Opinion polls are not objective analysis. They’re news. If an editor wants to get an issue rolling he commissions people like you to carry out some research. He knows what answers he wants and what headline he’s going to run, he just needs a few statistics to give the whole thing the smack of authenticity. Polls are the weapons of civil war. Kill off a government, show the nation’s morals are shot to hell, establish that we all love Palestinians or hate apple pie.’

He grew more animated as he warmed to his theme. His hands had come down from his mouth and were grasped in front of him as if throttling an incompetent editor. There was no sign of the toothpick; perhaps he had simply swallowed it, as he did most things which got in his way.

‘Information is power,’ he continued. ‘And money. A lot of your work is done in the City, for instance, with companies involved in takeover bids. Your little polls tell them how shareholders and the financial institutions might react, whether they’ll be supportive or simply dump the company for a bit of quick cash. Takeover bids are wars, life or death for the companies concerned. That information of yours has great value.’

‘And we charge a very good fee for such work.’

‘I’m not talking thousands or tens of thousands,’ he barked dismissively. ‘That’s petty cash in the City. The sort of information we’re talking about allows you to name your own figure.’ He paused to see if there would be a squawk of impugned professional integrity; instead she reached behind her to pull down her jacket, which had ridden up against the back of the sofa. As she did so she exposed and accentuated the curves of her breasts. He took it as a sign of encouragement.

‘You need money. To expand. To grab the polling industry by the balls and to become its undisputed queen. Otherwise you go belly-up in the recession. Be a great waste.’

‘I’m flattered by your avuncular interest.’

‘You’re not here to be flattered. You’re here to listen to a proposition.’

‘I’ve known that from the moment I got your invitation. Although for a moment there I thought we’d wound up on the lecture circuit.’

Instead of responding, he levered himself out of his chair and crossed to the window. The gun-grey clouds had descended still lower and it had begun to rain again. A barge was battling to make headway through the ebbing tide beneath Westminster Bridge where the December winds had turned the usually tranquil river into a muddy, ill-tempered soup of urban debris and bilge oil. He gazed in the direction of the Houses of Parliament, his hands stuffed firmly into the folds of his tent-like trousers, scratching himself.

‘Our leaders over there, the fearless guardians of the nation’s welfare. Their jobs are full of shared confidences, information waiting to be sensationalized and abused. And every single one of those bastards would leak the lot if it served their purposes. There’s not a political editor in town who doesn’t know every word of what’s gone on within an hour of a Cabinet meeting finishing, nor a general who hasn’t leaked a confidential report before doing battle over the defence budget. And you find me the politician who hasn’t tried to undermine a rival by starting gossip about his sex life.’ His hands flapped in his trouser pockets like the sails of a great ship trying to catch the wind. ‘Prime Ministers are the worst,’ he snorted contemptuously. ‘If they want to rid themselves of a troublesome Minister, they’ll assassinate him in the press beforehand with tales of drunkenness or disloyalty. Inside information. It’s what makes the world go round.’

‘Perhaps that’s why I never went into politics,’ she mused.

He turned towards her, to discover her seemingly engrossed in removing a stray hair from her sweater. When she was sure she had his full attention she stopped toying with him and hid once again inside the folds of her silk-cotton jacket. ‘So what is it you are going to suggest I do?’

He sat down beside her on the sofa. No jacket, only a swathe of tailored shirt, now at close quarters. His physical presence was, surprisingly to her fashion-conscious eye, indeed impressive.

‘I’m going to suggest you stop being an also-ran, a woman who may strive for years to make it to the top yet never succeed. I’m suggesting a partnership. With me. Your expertise’ – they both knew he meant inside information – ‘backed by my financial clout. It would be a formidable combination.’

‘But what’s in it for me?’

‘A guarantee of survival. A chance to make a lot of money, to get where you want to go, to the top of the pile. To show your former husband that not only can you survive without him but even succeed. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’

‘And how is all this supposed to happen?’

‘We pool our resources. Your information and my money. If there’s any action going on in the City, I want to be part of it. Get in there ahead of the pack and the potential rewards are huge. You and I split any profit right down the middle.’

She brought her forefinger and thumb together in front of her face. Her nose offered an emphatic bob. ‘Excuse me, but if I understand you right, isn’t that just the tiniest bit illegal?’

He responded with silence and a look of unquenchable boredom.

‘And it sounds as if you would be taking all the risk,’ she continued.

‘Risk is a fact of life. I don’t mind taking the risk with a partner I know and trust. I’m sure we could get to trust each other very closely.’

He reached out and brushed the back of her hand; a glaze of distrust flashed into her eyes.

‘Before you ask, getting you into bed is not an essential part of the deal – no, don’t look so damned innocent and offended. You’ve been flashing your tits at me from the moment you sat down so let us, as you say, cut through it all and get down to basics. Getting you on your back would be a pleasure but this is business and in my book business comes first. I’ve no intention of cocking up what could be a first-class deal by letting my brains slip between my legs. We’re here to screw the competition, not each other. So…what’s it to be? Are you interested?’

As if on cue a phone began to warble in a distant part of the room. With a grunt of exasperation, he levered himself up, but as he crossed the room to answer the call there was also anticipation; his office had the strictest instruction not to bother him unless…He barked briefly into the phone before returning to his guest, his hands spread wide.

‘Extraordinary. My cup runs over. That was a message from Downing Street. Apparently our new Prime Minister wishes me to call on him as soon as he’s back from the Palace, so I’m afraid I must rush off. Wouldn’t do to keep him waiting.’ His candle-wax face was contorted in what passed for a grin. She would be the focus of his attention for only a few moments longer: another place, another partner beckoned. He was already climbing into his coat. ‘So make it a very special day for me. Accept.’

She stretched for her handbag on the sofa but he was there also, his huge labourer’s hand completely encasing her own. They were very close and she could feel the heat from his body, smell him, sense the power beneath the bulk which was capable of crushing her instantly if he so chose. But there was no threat in his manner, his touch was surprisingly gentle. For a moment she caught herself feeling disarmed, almost aroused. Her nose twitched.

‘You go sort out the nation’s balance of payments. I’ll think about mine.’

‘Think carefully, Sally, and not too long.’

‘I’ll consult my horoscope. I’ll be in touch.’

At that moment the seagull made another screeching attack, hurling insults as it pounded against the window, leaving it dripping with guano. He cursed.

‘It’s supposed to be a lucky omen,’ she laughed lightly.

‘Lucky?’ he growled as he led her out of the door. ‘Tell that to the bloody window cleaner!’

CHAPTER TWO (#u0daff878-3fbd-5599-a02a-f4844cc6e11c)

A man should sleep uneasy in his palace if he wishes to keep it.

It hadn’t been as he had expected. The crowds had been much thinner than in years gone by; indeed, fewer than two dozen people standing outside the Palace gates, skulking tortoise-like beneath umbrellas and plastic raincoats, could scarcely be counted as a crowd at all. Maybe the great British public simply didn’t give a damn any more who their Prime Minister was.

He sat back in the car, a man of bearing and distinction amidst the leather, his tired smile implying a casual, almost reluctant acceptance of his lot. He had a long face, the skin ageing but still taut beneath the chin, austere like a Roman bust with lank silver-sandy hair carefully combed away from the face. He was dressed in his habitual charcoal-grey suit with two buttons and a brightly coloured, almost foppish silk handkerchief which erupted out of the breast pocket, an affectation he had adopted to distance himself from the Westminster hordes in their banal Christmas-stocking ties and Marks & Spencer suits. Every few seconds he would bend low, stretching down behind the seat to suck at the cigarette he kept hidden below the window line, the only outward show of the tension and excitement which bubbled within. He took a deep lungful of nicotine and for a while didn’t move, feeling his throat go dry as he waited for his heart to slow.

The Right Honourable Francis Ewan Urquhart, MP, gave a perfunctory wave to the huddled group of onlookers from the rear seat of his new ministerial Jaguar as it passed into the forecourt of Buckingham Palace. His wife Mortima had wanted to lower the window in order for the assorted cameramen to obtain a better view of them both, but discovered that the windows on the official car were more than an inch thick and cemented in place. She had been assured by the driver that nothing less than a direct hit from a mortar with armour-piercing shells would open them.

The last few hours had seemed all but comic. After the result of the leadership ballot had been announced at six o’clock the previous evening, he had rushed back to his house in Cambridge Street and waited there with his wife. For what, they hadn’t quite known. What was he supposed to do now? There had been no one to tell him. He had hovered beside the phone but it stubbornly refused to ring. He’d rather expected a call of congratulation from some of his parliamentary colleagues, perhaps from the President of the United States or at the very least his aunt, but already the new caution of his colleagues towards a man formerly their equal and now their master was beginning to exert itself; the President wouldn’t call until he’d been confirmed as Prime Minister and his aged aunt apparently thought his telephone would be permanently engaged for days. In desperation for someone with whom to share their joy, he and Mortima took to posing for photo calls at the front door and chatting with the journalists on the pavement outside.

Urquhart, or FU as he was often known, was not naturally gregarious, a childhood spent roaming alone with no more than a dog and a satchelful of books across the heathers of the family estates in Scotland had attuned him well to his own company, but it was never enough. He needed others, not simply to mix with but against whom to measure himself. It was what had driven him South, that and the financial despair of the Scottish Highlands. A grandfather who had died with no thought of how to avoid the venality of the Exchequer; a father whose painful sentimentality and attachment towards tradition had brought the estate’s finances to their knees. He had watched his parents’ fortunes and their social position wither like apple blossom in snow. Urquhart had got out while there was still something to extract from the heavily mortgaged moors, ignoring his father’s entreaties on family honour which in despair had turned to tearful denunciation. It had been scarcely better at Oxford. His childhood companionship with books had led to a brilliant academic career and to a readership in Economics, but he had not taken to the life. He had grown to despise the crumpled corduroy uniforms and fuzzy moralizing which so many of his colleagues seemed to dress and die in, and found himself losing patience with the dank river mists which swept off the Cherwell and the petty political posturings of the dons’ dinner table. One evening, the Senior Common Room had indulged in mass intellectual orgasm as they had flayed a junior Treasury Minister within an inch of his composure; for most of those present it had merely confirmed their views of the inadequacies of Westminster, for Urquhart it had reeked only of the opportunities. So he had turned his back on both the teeming moors and dreaming spires and had risen fast, while taking great care all the while to preserve his reputation as an academic. It made other men feel inferior, and in politics that was half the game.

It was only after his second photo call, about 8.30 p.m., that the telephone jumped back to life. A call from the Palace, the Private Secretary. Would he find it convenient to come by at about nine tomorrow morning? Yes, he would find that most convenient, thank you. Then the other calls began to flow in. Parliamentary colleagues unable any longer to control their anxieties about what job he might in the morning either offer to or strip from them. Newspaper editors uncertain whether to fawn or threaten their way to that exclusive first interview. Solicitous mandarins of the civil service anxious to leave none of the administrative details to chance. The chairman of the party’s advertising agency who had been drinking and couldn’t stop gushing. And Ben Landless. There had been no real conversation, simply coarse laughter down the phone line and the unmistakable sound of a champagne cork popping. Urquhart thought he might have heard at least one woman giggling in the background. Landless was celebrating, as he had every right to. He had been Urquhart’s first and most forthright supporter, and between them they had manoeuvred, twisted and tormented Henry Collingridge into premature retirement. Urquhart owed him, more than he could measure, while characteristically the newspaper proprietor had not been coy in identifying an appropriate yardstick.

He was still thinking about Landless as the Jaguar shot the right-hand arch at the front of the Palace and pulled into the central courtyard. The driver applied the brakes cautiously, aware not only of his regal surroundings but also of the fact that you cannot stop more than four tons of reinforced Jaguar in a hurry without making life very uncomfortable for the occupants and running the risk of triggering the automatic panic device which transmitted a priority distress alert to the Information Room at Scotland Yard. The car drew to a halt not beneath the Doric columns of the Grand Entrance used by most visitors but beside a much smaller door to the side of the courtyard, where, smiling in welcome, the Private Secretary stood. With great speed yet with no apparent hurry, he had opened the door and ushered forward an equerry to spirit Mortima Urquhart off for coffee and polite conversation, while he led Urquhart up a small but exquisitely gilded staircase to a waiting room scarcely broader than it was high. For a minute they hovered, surrounded by oils of Victorian horse-racing scenes and admiring a small yet uninhibited marble statue of Renaissance lovers until the Private Secretary, without any apparent consultation of his watch, announced that it was time. He stepped towards a pair of towering doors, knocked gently three times and swung them open, motioning Urquhart forward.

‘Mr Urquhart. Welcome!’

Against the backdrop of a heavy crimson damask drape which dressed one of the full-length windows of his sitting room stood the King. He offered a nod of respect in exchange for Urquhart’s deferential bow and motioned him forward. The politician paced across the room and not until he had almost reached the Monarch did the other take a small step forward and extend his hand. Behind Urquhart, the doors had already closed; the two men, one ruler by hereditary right and the other by political conquest, were alone.

Urquhart remarked to himself how cold the room was, a good two or three degrees below what others would regard as comfortable, and how surprisingly limp the regal handshake. As they stood facing each other neither man seemed to know quite how to start. The King tugged at his cuffs nervously and gave a tight laugh.

‘Worry not, Mr Urquhart. Remember, this is the first time for me, too.’ The King, heir for half a lifetime and Monarch for less than four months, guided him towards two chairs which stood either side of a finely crafted white stone chimneypiece. Along the walls, polished marble columns soared to support a canopied ceiling covered in elaborate classical reliefs of Muses, while in the alcoves formed between the stone columns were hung oversized and heavily oiled portraits of royal ancestors painted by some of the greatest artists of their age. Hand-carved pieces of furniture stood around a huge Axminster, patterned with ornate red and gold flowers and stretching from one end of the vast room to the other. This was a sitting room, but only for a king or emperor, and it might not have changed in a hundred years. The sole note of informality was struck by a desk, placed in a distant corner to catch the light cast by one of the garden windows and completely covered by an eruption of papers, pamphlets and hooks which all but submerged the single telephone. The King had a reputation for conscientious reading; from the state of his desk it seemed a reputation well earned.

‘I’m not quite sure where to start, Mr Urquhart,’ the King began as they settled in the chairs. ‘We are supposed to be making history but it appears there is no form for these occasions. I have nothing to give you, no rich words of advice, not even a seal of office to hand over. I don’t have to invite you to kiss my hand or take any oath. All I have to do is ask you to form a Government. You will, won’t you?’

The obvious earnestness of his Sovereign caused the guest to smile. Urquhart was in his early sixties, ten years older than the King, although the difference appeared less; the younger man’s face was stretched and drawn beyond its years with a hairline in rapid retreat and the beginnings of a stoop. It was said that the King had replaced his complete lack of material concerns with a lifetime of tortured spiritual questioning, and the strain was evident. While Urquhart had the easy smile and small talk of the politician, the intellectual aloofness of an academic and the ability to relax of a man trained to dissemble and if necessary to deceive, the King had none of this. Urquhart felt no nervousness, only the cold; indeed, he began to pity the younger man’s gravity. He leaned forward.

‘Yes, Your Majesty. It will be my honour to attempt to form a Government on your behalf. I can only hope that my colleagues won’t have changed their minds since yesterday.’